


Smoky Mountain Rain

by eponine119



Category: Lost
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-31
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:06:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27303871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eponine119/pseuds/eponine119
Summary: Juliet leaves the island. Sawyer sets out to find her.
Relationships: Juliet Burke/James "Sawyer" Ford
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	Smoky Mountain Rain

**Author's Note:**

> I am SO obsessed with this song and the way Ronnie Milsap sings it. (Not a songfic, just inspired by.) I also have such fond memories of time spent in a cabin in the Smokies with my fellow fangirls. ♥

Smoky Mountain Rain  
by eponine119  
August 29, 2020

“She's gone?”

Miles and Jin exchange a look in response to Sawyer's question. Miles frowns a little. “Yeah...did she not say goodbye to you?”

Sawyer glowers at them, but inside his heart is racing with something that feels like fear. It's the fifteenth damn day, and the sub left at sunrise. He doesn't understand. “Why the hell would she do that?”

Miles and Jin exchange another look, and Jin looks away. 

“What?” Sawyer demands, looking from one to the other. He can't believe she said goodbye to them, and not to him. Especially after... “What did she say?”

“Nothing, man,” Miles replies, too quickly. “Nothing.” 

“She probably think... you convince her to stay,” Jin offers. “If she talk to you.” 

Sawyer's heart sinks, and his eyes burn. Because she was damn right about that. Two weeks, and all his efforts, everything he thought was starting between them, was apparently all for nothing. She didn't feel the same. It didn't make a difference. 

He didn't make a difference. 

…

A month later, he drives the winding roads that lead through the mountains and the valleys, in a car he paid so little for it might as well be stolen. It's dark, and the road shines with rain. The radio's gone to static and he can't help thinking about what set him on this journey. He presses the accelerator a little harder.

…

Over the next two weeks, as he waits for the next sub and his opportunity to escape from this rock once and for all, Sawyer's thoughts begin to stray down an unexpected pathway. 

He's going to find her. 

He's not sure how, and he doesn't know what the hell he's going to say when he does. But he wants to see her again. Maybe he just wants the satisfaction of seeing her face, the expression in her blue eyes when she has to look at him again. Maybe when he does, he'll say goodbye to make his point and turn and walk away. 

It's not realistic, but it's a hell of a good fantasy. He's always had a penchant for the dramatic, for revenge. 

…

He knows this road, every curve and every twist. It doesn't look so different in 1974 than it did in the late eighties and early nineties when he used to drive it every weekend. When he spent more than one late weeknight speeding through the forest, knowing he had to be at his shitty car salesman job in the morning, but unable to resist. 

These mountains have a hold on his heart. There aren't a lot of places that Sawyer's ever thought of as home, but this was one, just for a little while. 

…

The night before the sub is to leave again, Sawyer slips into the security office. There's one guy in a jumpsuit with his chin on his fist sitting in front of the monitors, watching them with closed eyes. Keeping an eye on that guy, Sawyer eases open the file cabinet and flicks through the butter-yellow folders. Theirs are at the back. 

He grabs her file, and then on second thought, grabs his own too. Leave no trace, he thinks, as he sneaks back up the stairs. Out on the town square, in the open air, he feels like he can breathe again. The night is cool but humid, and he feels like he can taste the floral perfume of the jungle. Last time, he thinks, as he skulks into the gazebo. 

There's only a couple pieces of paper in the folders. The threadbare outline of their fictional lives that they had to cough up to stay even for two weeks. Juliet Carlson Burke, born March 18, 1940. He can just picture her doing the fast math in her head and getting it right. It takes him a minute to do the time travel calculus. She's 34; they're almost the same age. Born in Miami, Florida, it says. Researcher, it says for occupation. 

The next page says the background check was inconclusive; no records found. 

He realizes he doesn't know a damn thing about her. 

There is a photo, though. He holds it so it catches the light and looks at her face. She's almost smiling, and her blond hair is loose around her shoulders. She's looking past the camera, at something just out of range. Someone. He has that feeling in his chest again, because he knows it was him. He kept sneaking glances at her the whole time he was doing his formal interview in the recruiting center. 

He flips open the file on James LaFleur, ship captain, adventurer and explorer. There are paragraphs of bullshit, every damn word made up and embellished. He crumples it up and shoves it into his pocket. He glances at the photo and thinks they caught his bad side. Then he tucks the two pictures into the carefully folded information sheet about Juliet. They slide familiarly into the back pocket of his jeans, another paper memory to carry with him. 

…

The cabin had come down to him through the family. It had belonged to his grandmother, and hers before that, then down to his father. When all that happened, it passed to his uncle. When his uncle died, it came to him, James. 

His father had never mentioned it. They'd never gone there. Never took any kind of vacation at all that he could remember. His uncle Doug talked about it once or twice, or tried to. How they used to go there in the summers, two brothers playing and fighting and hunting up in the mountains. Their hair would turn white with the sun and their feet would turn black and tough from not wearing shoes all summer. 

“Sounds like a good memory,” James had said, sitting at the kitchen table, thinking that he didn't have many of those, and that his uncle was going to die, so it was good that he had some. James thought he'd have to make some good memories before his own number came up. 

…

In the morning, even though it's early, Miles and Jin are waiting for him. They're wearing their jumpsuits, ready for work. They're staying. 

This is where I fucked up, Sawyer thinks. He should have gotten up early, two weeks ago. He could have caught her. He just had no idea she was going to leave. 

“Say hi to Daniel,” Miles offers. 

Sawyer nods. Faraday joined up with Dharma, too, and went to join the eggheads. He left on the first sub, the day after they landed in the 70s. Last night, Sawyer and Miles and Jin hashed out the plan for if Locke made it back, and Sawyer promised to keep in touch with Faraday. 

“Miss you,” Jin says, and it's a promise. 

“Me too, Jin,” Sawyer says, and then it's time. He turns for one last look at the island, but it's dark and he can't see even the outline of the mountains. The men nod at each other, and Sawyer steps off the dock. 

…

He got the keys from the lawyer on his eighteenth birthday, the only tangible legacy. Last survivor of his line. Not Sawyer yet, he took off directly from the lawyer's office with fantasies of home dancing in the head of a kid who'd spent the last four years in foster care. 

The cabin was trashed. No one had been there since Doug and his dad were kids, which would have been the fifties, maybe the sixties. Sawyer had fixed it up, made it nice. He loved that damn cabin. 

He can't wrap his head around time travel and what it means for him in the yet-to-happen 80s if he goes to the cabin now. But he knows that it's safe. In 1974, he's five, and no one had been to that cabin for ten years on either side. It can be his last safe place again, just until he figures out what the hell to do next. He could use a little piece of home right now. 

It's there at the end of the road like it should be, and the rain beats down harder as he kills the engine. The cabin's little more than a shadow and Sawyer narrows his eyes, waiting for them to adjust to the darkness. Water pours over the windshield, further obscuring everything. 

He pushes open the car door and gets out and then stops. It's the scent that does it, so different from the damn island, and the US pollution in the 70s. It's clean. It smells like forest and rain and nighttime and a thousand things he can't describe but that his heart recognizes. It feels so good he stands in the pouring rain, soaked to the skin in seconds. 

A moment later he recognizes fire in the familiar scent; fire burned in the old wood stove. He squints and blinks the rain out of his eyes and thinks he sees smoke rising from the chimney. The bottom drops out of his stomach, and he takes a step backward, toward the car, as the door to the cabin opens. A golden glow of light escapes, and he watches a woman step out onto the porch. 

He should turn around and run, get back in the car and drive and never look back on what he doesn't want to see. But it's too late – the headlights, the sound of the car – they've given him away. His mind starts working on a story, a wrong turn taken somewhere back down the road. He can mask his accent; he knows how. He doesn't look that much like his dad, not enough that she'd ever suspect. Then he can drive back down the mountain in horror, having spoken to his own mother two years before her death. 

It's not possible. They aren't supposed to be there. No one is supposed to be there. 

But then the woman steps to the porch rail, and the light from the open door catches her curly hair and her blue eyes. It's not his mother. Sawyer's knees feel like they're going to buckle. “Juliet?” 

Because it's her, undeniably her, standing in front of him at his family's cabin in the Smoky Mountains in 1974. They stare at each other for a second. 

Then he runs and leaps the steps in a single bound and takes her in his arms. He's cold and wet and she's dry and warm. “Son of a bitch,” she breathes against his shoulder, and he can feel her ribs shaking underneath his hands. She pulls back to look at his face. Her eyes are dark blue and full of a thousand emotions, and he knows that he shouldn't, but he presses his lips to hers. 

She kisses him back. He holds her tightly against him, thinking this is all he's wanted for the past several weeks. She steps back and he releases her, opening his eyes to look at her. “I didn't think I'd find you,” he says, honestly. He shoves back his wet hair with his hand. “What in hell are you doing here?” 

“Come inside, James,” she says, in that calm voice of hers. “Get warm and dry off.” She goes back into the cabin, and he follows her. 

He stops inside the doorway, dripping on the floors. It's too much for him to take in. The cabin, the way he remembers it. Not trashed. There's a fire in the woodstove, and everything smells vaguely like cinnamon, apples, and dry cotton quilts. It looks and feels like home. He looks at her, and thinks she must have been here this whole time, making it a home again. 

She's engulfed in a huge sweater over a tank top and a long hippie skirt. Juliet sits on the sofa and pulls her bare feet up, then tips her head as she looks at him questioningly. 

He wants to touch her again, but he can't, so he goes into the tiny bathroom and grabs a towel and rubs his hair with it. He slips out of his leather jacket and carries it back into the main room, hanging it on the peg by the door. Then he bends to take off his boots, aware that she's watching him still. Turning his head, he catches her and watches her look away. Then she moves past him and up to the loft. 

Something light and soft falls on his head and he looks up in time to see her drop a pair of cotton pajama pants over the railing. Along with the shirt that she dropped first, it's a complete set of dry clothes. Sawyer tugs off his wet t-shirt and lets it fall, then pulls on the comfort of the dry shirt, which must have been left behind by some relative who meant to come back but then never did. 

He peels off his jeans, glancing over his shoulder to see if she's watching. She isn't; she's making tea on the stove. The pants are large on him and he re-ties the drawstring to keep them on his hips. When he turns, she's back on the couch, holding out a cup of tea. She nods to him, and he sits down beside her. 

“What are you doing here?” she asks. He thinks there's a hint of amusement in her voice and he lives for it in that moment. 

“What are you doing here?” he shoots back and sips the tea. It tastes like shit, but it's hot when he swallows it. 

“You first.” 

He gets up and goes into the galley kitchen, poking around under the sink. It's a cliché, but there should be a bottle of granny's moonshine here somewhere. 

“I dumped it out,” Juliet says. 

“You what?” 

“It'd make you go blind.” She looks at him, wearing that familiar mask of calm. “Come back over here and answer the question.” 

He's not sure he wants to be in her orbit. He can't breathe when he's next to her, can't think. “You didn't say goodbye,” he says, and hates himself for his honesty. 

“I couldn't,” she says. He shakes his head, and she looks away. “You're here. That proves it.” 

“Proves what?” he demands. 

“That you wouldn't let me go, James,” she says, and then she heaves herself from the couch and slips out the front door again. 

He goes after her, thinking he has to stop her from running in the forest in the rain, barefoot, but she only goes as far as the porch railing. A few drops of rain tumble from the roof to nest, sparkling, in her hair. He wants to taste it. But he keeps his distance. 

Juliet winds the sweater more tightly around her body. “I couldn't stay on that island.” 

“You couldn't tell me that?” 

She looks at him and he sees sadness on her lips. “I did tell you,” she says simply. “That first night, on the dock. When you got me to stay.” 

“I didn't make you do anything you didn't want to do.” 

“You're right,” she says. “You didn't.” 

“Hell, I would have come with you.” 

“Maybe you were supposed to stay on the island, James,” she says. 

“Don't talk to me about destiny,” he says. “You don't believe in destiny.” 

“I don't know what I believe anymore.” She looks out into the darkness. “I always did love the rain.” 

“Juliet,” he says. 

“You told me about this place,” she says. “It sounded so... I couldn't think where else to go.” 

She missed him, he realizes. 

“I didn't think you'd be here,” she says, with a wry twist to her mouth. 

“I been lookin' all over for you,” he says. “I gave up and figured I'd come home.” He sighs. “And here you were.” 

She looks at him, and kind of smiles. He has no idea what she's thinking, but something inside him is relaxing for the first time in weeks. 

“I told you about this place?” he asks her. 

She shrugs, and nods. “You don't even remember.” 

“I said a lot of things,” he sighs. 

She nods again, and it gives him a strange feeling in his chest. Like she's about to fall apart. 

“You okay, Juliet?” he asks. 

She shakes her head and the tears start to fall. It's only two steps for him to reach her and fold her up in his arms again. She clings to him and he just holds her. He's not sure he's ever going to let her go, and she feels so good in his arms that he doesn't mind at all. She sniffles, and starts to pull away, and he releases her. He tugs the sweater back up onto her shoulders, fixing it for her. Then he smooths her hair back and looks into her eyes. 

“I didn't even know where to start looking,” he says. “I did a lot of talking but not enough listening.” He's waiting for her to tell him something. Anything. He thinks he's going to go crazy, waiting. “You want me to go?” 

“No,” she says. A lock of blond hair falls against her cheek. “I don't want you to go anywhere.” She looks at him, curious and unsure, and there's something about it that he finds so seductive without her even trying. 

“How'd you get here?” he asks her. 

“The same way you did, I expect. Although the Mustang's a nice touch,” she says, nodding to the car. 

“I doubt you conned some tourist lady in Tahiti into buyin' you a ticket to LA,” he says darkly. 

“No, Horace gave me money before I left. I think he felt sorry for me.” 

“Same difference then,” he says sarcastically. 

“You didn't call Daniel.” 

“Been meanin' to. Never got around to it.” 

“He knew where I was going. Where I am,” Juliet says. “Just in case.” 

“Son of a bitch,” Sawyer breathes. It could have been that easy.

“I took a bus from LA.” 

“I went to Miami,” Sawyer volunteers. “Lookin' for you.” 

“There's nothing for me there now.” 

“I asked so many people so many questions. Showed your picture all around. You been here the whole time?” 

“Almost,” she says. 

He wonders if she was waiting for him. Even if he asked her, he doesn't think she'd say. He sighs. He spent so much time looking for her and no time figuring out what to do next. “Listen, that last night – I'm sorry.” 

“I'm not,” she says, in that direct way she has, and it makes him smile. She smiles back at him. 

…

The last day of his two weeks. It weighs on him, more than it should. He thought Locke would have been back by now. That they'd be home. Not stuck in the wrong damn century. It's starting to feel like forever.

He finds himself watching her closely. He's not sure what he's looking for. Nothing's happened between them, not in two weeks, and he figures that means it's not going to. They've had a lot of conversations, but they all end with her saying goodnight and heading back to her bunk. 

There's a few places that are theirs, where they can be alone and out of earshot and talk about things that aren't going to happen for another thirty years. One is the gazebo, but when he wanders by, it's otherwise occupied. The other is the dock, and that's where he finds her. 

He's not sure why she comes out here. What she likes about it. It feels like their place to him, because this is where they sat that first night. He already felt a connection with her, from trying to survive the time flashes out in the jungle, but the night he asked her to stay was really their beginning. Over the past two weeks he's found her out here, sometimes running her fingers through the waves, thinking about what's out there, beyond the sea. 

The sub is parked again, but he doesn't ask her if she's decided to stay or go because he thinks it's a foregone conclusion that she's staying. But maybe the cold metal sight of it is what drives the rest of what happens that night. 

He sits down beside her. His shoulder brushes against hers. She looks at him and gives him that smile. It makes him feel warm inside, and he grins back at her, and he can see the effect it has on her. It's mutual, this thing. 

“You ever think about it?” he asks her. 

“I think about a lot of things, James,” she replies, and gives him a look. Then she takes the bait. “Think about what.” 

“Goin' to bed with me,” he says. 

“That's so romantic,” she says, and looks out at the darkness of the ocean. 

He threads his fingers through hers for the very first time and closes his hand, holding hers tightly. Her palm presses against his. 

“Yes, I've thought about it,” she says evenly, but her breath is rapid and shallow. 

He chuckles with satisfaction, and wonders what she thought about. If she fantasized about him while she was lying in her little bed at night. If her hands had touched her pale skin while she was doing this thinking. 

“How were you thinkin' it might come about?” he asks. 

“The usual way,” she says, in a low voice, then says, “I don't know, I skipped that part.” 

“Maybe I kissed you first,” he suggests. 

“Maybe you did.” The words are barely more than a breath as she turns her head to look at him. They're inches apart. Her eyes search his, and then close as he tilts his head to press his lips against hers. Softly at first, his mouth caressing hers, then her lips part and her tongue finds his. 

The kiss ends and he looks at her. “What happened next?” he asks. 

“You probably touched me,” she says softly. 

“Like this?” He slides his hand underneath her shirt. 

“Mmm.” Her eyes close and her back arches. Her mouth opens with something that looks like wonder. He aches for her. 

“I bet then I carried you to the bedroom,” he says. 

“No, because you'd strain your back.” 

“It's a pretty strong back,” he tells her, and she squeals as he proves it, hauling her into his arms. He steadies himself and then covers the distance to the yellow houses with long strides. Everyone in the Dharma Initiative is safely tucked into bed, dreaming their dreams of making the world a better place, so no one sees them. Not that it would matter if they did. 

He sets her gently on his bed and she looks up at him. He kisses her again, pulling at her clothes desperately after feeling her body against his as he carried her. She kisses him back, shoving his shirt back off his shoulders and undoing his jeans. His body covers hers, and later, they fall asleep in each others' arms. 

And when he wakes up she's gone, really gone, without so much as a word. 

…

“You left because of me,” he says. “Because we --” 

“No,” she says. “I'd already decided to go. That's why. Because I wanted to.”

He just looks at her, trying to understand. 

“I chose the coward's way, and I'm sorry,” she says. “That's why I couldn't face you. I couldn't say goodbye. I knew... I wouldn't be able to leave if I did. And then I missed you. So I came here.” 

“Are you at least glad to see me?” he asks. 

She smiles, and it means the whole world to him. 

“Summers, they used to sleep out here on the porch. Or so I heard tell.” 

“I always wanted a sleeping porch, like in books,” Juliet says. “But it's not summer.” 

“I'll keep you warm,” he promises. 

…

The rain stops during the night, and they lie there together under a pile of soft quilts in the pink sunrise. He can just see the smoke of the mountains from where he's laying. She's awake, and he holds her, and neither of them say anything for a long time. He strokes her long hair, loving the feel of it between his fingers. 

“I need to listen,” he says. 

She raises up, to look at him. “Rain's stopped,” she points out. “It's quiet.” 

“No,” he says. “To your stories.” She frowns at him, not understanding, and he settles her against him again. He takes a deep breath. “I told you so much about this place, you wanted to come here, and you found it. But I didn't have the first idea where to start lookin' for you. You know everything about me --” 

“Not everything,” she corrects, in a low voice that he finds irresistible. 

“I know you, Juliet, but I don't know about you.” 

“What do you want to know?” 

“Everything,” he suggests. 

“So boring.” She burrows into his shoulder. 

“No.” 

“The first, most important thing you need to know about me,” she says, lifting up her head again to meet his eyes. “Is how I like to be kissed.” 

“Is that right,” he says, with a mischievous grin. 

She raises an eyebrow and nods very seriously. 

“I think I figured that one out.” 

“Maybe we should make sure,” she suggests. “Practice, to make sure you've got it right.” 

“Oh, I've got it right,” he assures her, and then proves it to her. 

When they've finished and are lying against each other again, he says her name urgently. “Juliet.” 

“Hm?” 

“Promise me you won't leave me again.” He feels uniquely vulnerable asking her this, but he has to. He can't go to sleep and wake up with her gone again. That's why he needs to learn her stories, but it's not enough. He needs for her to trust him, or believe in him, or something he doesn't understand yet. 

“I'm not going anywhere,” she vows. 

He takes her at her word and snuggles against her, deep within their blankets. He's not in danger. No one's trying to hurt them. He's safe, with her, in the only home he's ever known.


End file.
